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Today I want to talk to you about negotiation skills and techniques, specifically the biggest mistake you can make when they’re negotiating to buy a business.
- Let’s Paint The Picture [0:00]
- The Mistake Is Focusing On ONE Thing [0:43]
- Have An Abundance Mindset [1:49]
- Negotiations, are really… [2:18]
Let’s Paint The Picture [0:00]
Let’s say you’ve gone out and you’ve found a business for sale. You’ve then gone and you’ve evaluated it. You’ve worked out that it’s a great business, it meets your rules, it’s perfect for you and you move on to negotiate, a really fun, exciting and energetic time in the whole business buying process. It’s time to put your negotiation skills and techniques to good use.
The Mistake Is Focusing On ONE Thing [0:43]
Now here’s the thing, the biggest mistake that everyone makes when they go in to the negotiations is they think about one thing, can you guess what it is?
Yourself – The biggest mistake you can make when you’re negotiating to buy a business is only think of yourself!
Many people come to my How to Buy a Business for a Dollar intensive and some people seem to think that I must be teaching my students to screw other people over, that I’m giving them questionable negotiation skills and techniques – this couldn’t be further from the truth. When all you do is think about yourself, you will end up in what I call a lose-lose situation.
If you’re talking to someone who wants to actively sell their business and you’re actively searching to buy a business, if all you do is think about yourself, I guarantee you, that you will end up in a lose-lose, where you don’t buy the business and the vendor does not sell their business or they sell and hold a grudge against you for the rest of their lives.
When this happens you’ve both lost.
Have an Abundance Mindset [1:49]
What I teach my students, is to come from a place of “do not screw people over”, have an abundance mindset, a WIN-WIN attitude. Every situation in business, in life, I believe everyone can win in every situation. There is win-win available in everything. You just need to know how to find it.
That’s what I teach. I show you how do you find the WIN-WIN.
Negotations, really are… [2:18]
… about building rapport. It’s about getting to know the other party’s situation, their needs, their wants and everything else that’s going on.
The more you understand of their point of view and where they’re at, the more you can find a win-win that is over and above the fact that they wanna sell their business and you wanna buy a business.
So when you go into your negotiations, even if you forget any and all negotiation skills and techniques you know just remember one thing. It’s not about you! Focus on both yourself and the other party.
The more you understand the other party, the more you’ll be able to work out how you can help them and solve their problem and come to an understanding that you both. Both the buyer and the seller, walk away from a successful transaction happy and there’s no bad blood.
Carl is the Author of Red Means Go! and founder of Business Builders Academy. He invests in and runs a number of businesses, and regularly teaches business skills through online training and live speaking events.
